Orders stop when character leaves room.

If the player gives an order to another character, and that character leaves partway through the order, then all the orders stop.

I’d like to have it give him all the orders at once.

(Related: If John Smith arrives partway through, it will require a disambiguation prompt.)

I didn’t know you could even issue that kind of order!

This worked in one test case, for the first problem:

The person previously asked is a person that varies. After reading a command: now the person previously asked is the player. Before asking someone to try doing something: now the person previously asked is the person asked. After deciding the scope of the player when the person previously asked is not the player: place the person previously asked in scope.

Not sure about the John Smith problem – maybe you could write a “does the player mean” rule around the person previously asked?

RE: the John Smith issue- my advice is just to not have characters with similar names. This:

Does the player mean asking the person previously asked to try doing something: it is very likely.

doesn’t work, even when you add:

Does the player mean asking someone in the location of the player to try doing something: it is very unlikely.

Nice.

Some extra items:

[code]Before reading a command: now last person asked is yourself.

Does the player mean asking someone (called the ordered) to try doing something:
if the last person asked is not the player:
if the ordered is the last person asked:
it is very likely;
it is very unlikely.
[/code]

First part is to make sure the character only stays in scope for one turn (and prevent the player from, say, examining him after the character leaves the room).

I can’t get the ‘Does the player mean asking someone’ to work. The test scenario I’m using is:

[code]Test One is a room. The monster 1 is a person in test. The Void is a room. Monster 2 is a person. Monster 2 is in the void. Void is west of test one. Pickles is north of void.

Check asking people to try going:
place the noun in scope.

Persuasion rule for asking people to try going:
persuasion succeeds.

The person previously asked is a person that varies.

After reading a command: now the person previously asked is the player.
Before asking someone to try doing something: now the person previously asked is the person asked.
After deciding the scope of the player when the person previously asked is not the player: place the person previously asked in scope.

Before reading a command: now the person previously asked is yourself.

Does the player mean asking someone (called the ordered) to try doing something:
if the person previously asked is not the player:
if the ordered is the person previously asked:
it is very likely;
it is very unlikely.

Every turn:
try monster 2 going east.

Test me with “monster, go west then go north”[/code]

But this fails with:

Pending a more sophisticated fix, I still counsel the avoidance of having people with the same name.

Changing it to a “before reading a command” rule is probably a good idea – not sure why I didn’t think of that.

I was worried that this might mess things up when you link together a request and something the PC is supposed to do itself, but it looks like you can’t do that:

Everything after “whiz” is interpreted as a request to whiz, even the part that’s set off by a period. I think this means that when the person previously asked is not the player, all commands are interpreted as requests to someone else, so nothing untoward will come of altering the player’s scope.

Tradition is that “john, do this. do that” is all treated as one order to John.